AJA Video has begun shipping Io HD, which delivers HD editing to the MacBook Pro and Mac Pro via the FireWire 800 (IEEE-1394b) interface.

Io HD is the first device to natively support Apple’s ProRes 422 video format in hardware.

“We worked very closely with Apple to embed support for ProRes 422 directly into the Io HD, and the effort is yielding an incredible level of performance and video format flexibility to Final Cut Pro editors,” said AJA President Nick Rashby.

Io HD includes features similar to those on the Grass Valley, Calif.-based company’s Kona lineup, including 10-bit hardware-based real-time up/down/cross-conversion. It offers SD/HD analog inputs and outputs, SD/HD digital I/O including HD-SDI and HDMI, as well as RS-422.